


No Fate

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Civil War (Marvel), Developing Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Falling In Love, Love, Not a romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Trope Bingo Round 4, Trope Subversion/Inversion, non-romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not about their soulmarks. It never was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Fate

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : there's a mention of childhood abuse (non-sexual) partway through. Maria doesn't sugarcoat or allude what happened to her, she tells it as it was.
> 
> For the Trope Bingo prompt " **soul bonding/soulmates** ". This is what happens when your brain gets an idea that only needs to be 500 words and runs the frigging Boston Marathon with it.

The neighbours call the cops when the screaming doesn’t stop.

It’s the first time they do.

It’s the last time they will.

A blurry six weeks later, Maria Hill enters the foster system at eight, her blue eyes flat and wary. She comes with what the Child Services social worker, burned-out over the course of fifteen years of painful and embittering cases, briskly terms ‘gratitude issues’.

In later years, Maria supposes this means that she should have accepted the fussing of the CS workers who pitied her with their eyes, and petted her with their hands, and cooed over her bandaged arm as they reassured her that everything was going to be okay.

Even at eight, Maria disliked pretty lies.

* * *

The earliest recorded example of a soulmark is from a painting by Australian Aborigines, thirty-six thousand years old and so carefully preserved that it’s only been photographed all of ten times since it’s discovery in 1965.

Two people – male and female from their accoutrements – stand side by side with a mark over each of their heads, and a mark over each of their left arms. The mark over the male head and the female arm is a fish and the mark over the female’s head and the male’s arm is a ceremonial vessel.

As long as there have been people, there have been soulmarks.

The Chinese called it ‘the symbol of Heaven’s favour’ after one of their earliest emperors declared it divine. The Egyptians called it ‘the mark of the gods’ and royal siblings were married to each other on the basis of it. The Romans first called it a ‘soul-mark’ - _sigma animus_ – but it was the Greek philosophers who ascribed it to the perfect match of souls, the proper and best combination of all things for those who bore it.

And yet, from the Chinese alchemists to the Greek philsophers, from the Renaissance masters to the Victorian scientists, from brutal Nazi experiments to the careful examinations of modern medicine, nobody has managed to explain exactly how a soulmark comes to be or shows what it does.

The modern world casts the soulmark in a romantic or sexual light, but historically, it doesn’t need to be that way.

And plenty of people live, survive, and thrive without ever bearing a soulmark at all.

Maria becomes one of them. At least on the surface.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D issues covering gauntlets to those who may not wish to advertise that they have a soulmark. It’s not unusual in large organisations these days, although that’s less due to any sense of modesty or privacy and more to do with the fact that it’s essentially free advertising space.

Thankfully, the S.H.I.E.L.D gauntlets are plain black mesh weave with a padded underlayer that doesn’t irritate the flesh beneath. No muss, no fuss.

For the first time since she was eight, Maria no longer stands out.

At least, not because of her soulmark.

There’s some curiosity among her peers, of course. Unlike others, she doesn’t ever take the gauntlet off, save for when its time for her physicals. The medical staff are grumpy when she exercises her right to only reveal her left forearm in the presence of her assigned S.H.I.E.L.D medical examiner, but they don’t deny her the privacy.

The doctor blinks when he sees, but he’s otherwise brisk and professional right up until the end of the physical, when he asks, “Is the bastard still alive?”

Maria turns, surprised that he hasn’t assumed self-mutilation. In the Marines, the doctor assumed she was a misandrist feminist who didn’t want to ‘belong’ to a guy and so destroyed it herself. He never did the research; Maria never bothered correcting him.

So it takes her a moment to answer. “So far as I know, yes.”

Old Doc Fine nods once, then turns back to the labels he’s sticking on the vials.

Maria’s tempted to ask why it matters, but she suspects the doc would never tell her anyway.

* * *

By the time she makes full agent, there’s a book open about what exactly is beneath her gauntlet.

“They’d be less curious if you were less secretive about it,” Sharon Carter says when Maria expresses her annoyance upon the discovery of the bet.

Maria doesn’t look up from the weapons she’s checking before they head out on the mission. “It’s none of their business.”

Yes, she could reveal what’s left of her soulmark. But there’d _still_ be speculation – which could never be proved anyway – _and_ she’d have to endure the pity and the questions, the assumptions and the amusement. She gets enough shit for being too serious and by-the-book (hah), why add more?

So nobody knows.

Or so she thinks until the day Agent May sits down on the other side of the table where Maria’s sitting and analysing a mission Coulson gave her to pick apart.

“He’s dead.”

Maria looks up, blinks, frowns. “Who is?”

“Nobody important,” May says, her usually expressive face stony cold. “I just thought you’d like to know.”

Maria’s not known as The Ice Bitch of S.H.I.E.L.D Operations Academy for nothing. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay.” May hesitates a moment, then stands and leaves as abruptly as she arrived.

‘Thank you’ hovers on Maria’s lips as she watches the older agent go. But she’s not grateful for this news, not grateful for the tearing open of a wound that she’d thought had healed, but which, it seems, has only scabbed.

* * *

Maria works hard and thinks sharp. She rises through the ranks and ignores the rumours. She makes friends but doesn’t tell them about the soulmark. The ones she trusts most don’t ask about it. When Fury flags her for promotion to Deputy Director, tongues wag. Maria ignores them, too.

Still, it has to come apart someday – and eventually it does.

S.H.I.E.L.D gauntlets were made to withstand rough usage. They were going to be worn by agents doing hard work, rough work, dangerous work; the last thing someone needed to worry about was another piece of equipment. But they weren’t made to withstand the strength of a super-soldier.

Maria makes the leap across widening space with a hundred-foot drop below her. Rubberized soles catch the edge of the ramp, but the Quinjet is already moving forward and she can’t quite match that motion. Her weapon’s in her right, so she reaches out with her left, already knowing it’s not going to be enough – there’s nothing to grip, and it’s a long fall…

Rogers moves fast as a whip, his hand grabbing her wrist and pulling her in with a yank that nearly wrenches her shoulder.

Maria hears fabric rip but it means nothing, not compared to getting her feet on solid ground, to finding her balance, to the successful completion of a mission that everyone else in S.H.I.E.L.D had said was suicide.

Then she registers the stares and the hushed expletives, sees the gauntlet dangling torn threads from Rogers’ hand, and looks down at the bared scar of shiny pink – all that’s left of her soulmark.

* * *

Barton once observed that, for an organisation of secrets, S.H.I.E.L.D often felt more like a big pool of gossip, out of which they occasionally ran missions.

Today, Maria realises he’s not wrong.

Walking into the Triskelion is hell, even with the gauntlet firmly around her wrist again, but Maria keeps a cool and chilly countenance. If the gossip mills are going to churn, she’s not going to give them anything more than what they already have.

As she stalks towards the elevator bank on the other side of the atrium, Maria meets avid and speculative gazes. Some of them drop away, some turn to whisper with their co-workers.

One gaze does neither: Steve Rogers moves to join her as she crosses the floor.

“Come to witness the fallout?”

“Come to apologise.”

“You did that already. Twice.”

They reach the elevator lobby and wait among others for the next car to arrive. Maria notes the way people around them are shifting, and braces herself for question that _someone_ is going to ask, because it’s just too big not to.

Then Rogers tucks his hands in his jacket pockets, drawing attention with the very deliberate movement. “Commander, I was under the impression it was socially impolite to discuss other people’s soulmarks. Particularly when they’ve indicated the topic is not up for discussion.”

Maria glances sidewise at him, at the unyielding expression on his face, at the angry glitter in his eyes. Not all of that anger is directed outwards, at the gossips around them. It thaws her, just a little. “Small minds with big jaws like chewing grist, Captain.”

“So I’m seeing.”

Mouths snap shut around them – some of them quite audibly.

The ride up to the Directorate level is quiet.

* * *

The shift to privatising world security changes things, of course.

On the first day working with Stark, Maria looks at the long charcoal-grey sleeve sitting on her dresser. Made of a silk mesh, it will cover her left forearm from wrist to elbow. Then she leaves it on the dresser and walks out of her apartment and into the car that’s waiting for her.

As Stark observes that evening when he drops in ‘to see the damage’, the gloves are quite clearly off.

“You realise,” Pepper says several days later, “that Extremis could heal the scar if you wish. With or without the soulmark, as you prefer.”

“Would that be for my comfort, or everyone else’s?”

“Yours.” The answer comes without hesitation, which is why Maria considers it at all.

Maria looks at the shiny pink skin, slightly ridged around the edges. “It’s made me who I am,” she says after a few moments. “Shaped everything I’ve become. I’ve learned to be comfortable with it.”

“And everyone else can live with it.” Pepper smiles a little as she looks down at her own forearm and the Iron Man mask at the end of the single word: STARK. The prevailing theory on that is that Stark only became Pepper’s soulmate after he became Iron Man. “Do you ever wonder?”

“No.” She’s learned not to.

Maybe her soulmate is out there somewhere, but Maria doesn’t see the point in waiting for him or her to turn up.

She wouldn’t know them as her soulmate anyway.

* * *

Maria finds Steve intimidating without the uniform and the familiar bulwark of S.H.I.E.L.D formality between them: not a hero, not a soldier, just a man. A really well-formed, good-looking guy with a faint edge to him that belies the quietness and makes a woman automatically check she looks her best.

“Excuse the mess,” she says as she tosses the keys into their dish and hangs up her purse.

“I’ll just clean it up while you’re working.” He settles his duffle on the couch arm and looks around, absently rolling his shoulders to get out the kinks. “Do you have a guest room or am I relegated to the couch?”

“Don’t you have to do something wrong to end up on the couch?”

His mouth quirks. “As I understand it, I’d have to be sharing your bed to end up on the couch.”

She thinks it’s a joke for all of the first two seconds before his expression registers. Astonishment turns to—no, it stays astonishment. “You were waiting for an engraved invitation?”

Steve’s gaze is steady on her face. “A verbal one would do.”

“Why?”

“I’d prefer it was because you like me and desire me,” is the reply. “But I’ll settle for you being horny and me being here.”

Maria frowns. “That doesn’t answer the question” She pauses as his expression darkens. “What?”

“You’re going to say you don’t know why I’d sleep with you.”

“I don’t.”

Steve seems about to say something, but closes his mouth about the words. Then he comes towards her, slow and steady and inevitable, like an avalanche after the snow’s already shifted.

They end up on the couch, against the kitchen counter, and in the shower before they make it to bed.

* * *

Steve never asks about the scar.

After the first couple of times they hook up, Maria stops bracing herself for the question.

He touches it without pity or flinching or particular care, wraps his fingers around it when she lets him tug her up against him while discussing matters such as world security, the latest addition to Sam’s harem, and what the hell world powers think they’re doing now.

He never asks what happened.

And Maria finds herself touching his soulmark from time to time – the sketchy scattering of dots that indicates he has a soulmark, it just hasn’t shown clear yet. So far as she knows, his has never had a name, although speculation during the war was that his was Peggy Carter. And after New York and DC, sections of the modern world went into a mad frenzy over whose name might be on his arm – the frontrunner was and still is Natasha, who has no soulmark at all, and just smiled the first time someone suggested it.

“You could ask about it,” Steve says one morning, startling her a little. “If you want.”

Maria wants. But her wants are dangerous things, so she shakes her head and withdraws her hand. “No.”

Steve’s expression darkens, but he only leans over and kisses her, fierce and firm and ferociously ardent. And Maria pushes the thought of soulmarks – his and hers – out of her mind and gives herself over to something simpler, less fraught.

Only it’s not. Not really. Not when, afterwards, still sprawled with her hand cupping his nape, Steve turns to rub his cheek against the blank space of the soulmark she doesn’t have anymore.

* * *

There are points in every relationship where choices must be made about degrees of intimacy.

By the next time Steve’s around, Maria’s made a decision – for better or for worse.

“You’ve never asked about my soulmark.”

Steve looks up from the Shanghai analysis he’s reading on a tablet, startled and still. “You never wanted to tell me.”

“My father destroyed it when I was eight.” There’s no nice way to say it, so she doesn’t try. “I don’t remember much beyond the pain, but the medical report concluded that he skinned my forearm, then seared the flesh underneath with a blowtorch to make sure it would never regen.”

There’s a crunch of glass and plastic. Then Steve sets the crushed tablet down on the table with controlled care.

“Why?”

Maria flattens her hands on the table and looks black horror and white rage in the eye, unflinching. “He said since I’d deprived him of his soulmate – my mother – I was never going to know mine.”

His shoulders heave once, helpless grief and useless anger for a tortured and traumatised eight year-old girl who grew up. Then he exhales. “Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He reaches out across the table to her, sliding his hand into hers so their fingers lace together. “Thank you for telling me. You didn’t have to. I didn’t need to know.”

 _Yes,_ Maria thinks, _you did._

It’s best that Steve knows the dark spaces inside her.

* * *

Maria wakes at her usual hour, and frowns briefly at the _thud-thud-thud_ of the punching bag in the spare room.

Sweat darkens Steve’s hair, glistens along his spine, damps the waistband of his pants. Maria wonders how long he’s been at this, and whether it helps him. Then he turns although she’s pretty sure she made no noise, and she realises he’s battered his hands raw through the bandages.

For a moment Maria can’t think. Then, “Idiot,” she growls. “It was a long time ago.”

“Does it help to say that?”

“I don’t know. Does it?” The pause as he looks away is telling. “It’s not your fight, Steve. It never was.”

Steve’s whole body goes tense, before he meets her gaze again. “Can you accept that I’m angry about it?”

“Can you accept that it’s done and gone?”

It takes him a moment to get the word out of his mouth. “Yes.”

“Then, yes, I can accept that you’re angry about it.” Something sticks in her throat, ridiculous and weak and sentimental, and to stave it off she crosses the room and puts her arms around him, hoping there’s enough tenderness in her for this.

It takes a moment, but his arms close around her, fingers scrunching in her hair as he holds her close against him, his lips against her temple. And Maria takes a deep, shuddering breath and exhales it. Her sleep wasn’t exactly quiet, haunted by old and bloody ghosts roused by the retelling.

“Thanks for being angry,” she murmurs.

* * *

Standing at the kitchen bench, Maria wraps her hands firmly around her mug, and stares at the jug as it percolates a cup of coffee for Steve while he showers.

He’s angry. It’s not his right to be angry, but he’s right to be angry. If it was anyone else but herself, Maria would be angry, too. And it hasn’t changed anything, if the very heated couple of rounds of sex on the mats in the spare bedroom was any indication.

So why is she restless and irritated?

_He didn’t push you. He never has. You told him because you wanted him to know._

Maybe it’s just that she’s never told anyone she didn’t absolutely have to – usually for legal reasons. Those who know only do because they had access to the redacted files – or squirrelled through to find it: Maria’s never asked how Melinda found out, and Melinda’s never told.

And now she’s told Steve and...she doesn’t know what happens next.

There’s a step behind her, and she turns to find Steve standing in the doorway, barefoot, bare-chested, a towel slung over his shoulders, his hair in a spikey damp crown. “You regret telling me, don’t you?”

“I—” Maria gives up the automatic denial as he comes to her, steps into her space, slips his arms around her waist. “Yes. I’m not used to anyone knowing—”

“Maria.” He halts her with her name and a brief, fierce kiss. “I’ll never not be furious at what your father did to you. But I’m relieved I’ll never see someone else’s name on your arm.”

And all she can do is stare at him, at the intense blue gaze that turns rueful at his own honesty.

* * *

What does one do after a confession like that?

She sneaks the results from the medical workups that Tony insists all the Avengers get as part of their health cover. She looks it over for signs of...well, anything out of the ordinary: anything that might suggest mind control, or intoxication, or intellectual regression.

Maria’s a realist, not a romantic.

The results show nothing. Steve Rogers is sane, unpossessed, and perfectly normal – except for being a super-soldier and thinking he’s in love with Maria Hill.

And life goes on. The fight goes on.

Nothing changes on the surface – Maria’s careful about that. And Steve doesn’t seem to require anything more from her, any reciprocal declaration. He’s able to let her make her own choice, let her decide – and she’s beyond grateful for that. But in the spaces where nobody sees, her emotional continents have shifted in a realignment of her world.

Too many people of her generation use their soulmark as an easy out – no effort or sacrifice required: instant perfect relationship – just add soulmate! Maria’s scar has given her the distance to recognise that a name on her forearm isn’t love.

Maria doesn’t think this thing with Steve now is love, either. It’s just coffee in the morning and housework at night, space to do her own thing and respect for her competence, appreciating her efforts and not criticising her choices – and the occasional drift of his fingers over her scar, as though the soulmate she’ll never know could be divined by touch.

She wishes it could have been his name.

* * *

It’s a relief to pull off the disguise mesh, even if the tense shiver of the air suggests that Skye isn’t at all happy to see her. “I should turn you in.”

“You should,” Maria agrees, then pulls out the reason for her visit. “But I need your help.”

Skye eyes the scratched, burned remnant of what was a portable hard drive. “Yeah, hate to break it to you but there’s nothing can help that.”

“Zola’s decryption algorithms can.” That and Skye’s knowledge of how to wield them. “You have them – they were in Phil’s start-up kit.”

“You realise decryption algorithms only work on the _insides_ of the drive? That thing has no insides worth speaking of.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to appear.”

Skye stares at the drive, then steps back. “One wrong move and I’ll melt your bones.”

While Skye works on the drive, Maria pulls off the arm mesh and rubs her hand along the scar, massaging the flesh which has been sensitive and itchy the last couple of weeks.

_I’m relieved I’ll never see someone else’s name on your arm._

Maria imagines he’d now be relieved he never saw his own there.

When the typing stops, she looks up to find Skye staring. She forestalls the inevitable question. “What’s on the drive?”

“E-paper. Lots and lots of it.”

It’s a papertrail in electronic documents: payments and politics, information and invoices, and the long, terrifying chain of a long, deadly game being played by parties who don’t care about the Superhero Registration Act or the safety of humanity, just power.

And underneath it, the leech that has always clung to the underbelly of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“Fucking HYDRA,” Skye mutters, and the air shivers with her power.

“Control,” Maria says grimly.

* * *

There are nicer ways to rip her heart out than to face Steve Rogers again, with no hint of what was between them on her face. But some things need to be done, and this is one of them.

She’s cornered with the shield edge pressing into her throat before he realises who she is. There’s a moment when she thinks he might keep pressing – then he pulls back. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ve been set up,” she says after a moment working her throat. “All of us. The Registration Act was specifically developed to split S.H.I.E.L.D proponents down the middle.”

Behind Steve, there’s a shuffle of people at the door – red hair and a deadly gaze, the silver gleam of a biomechanical arm, and more than a few people who’d have happily pressed that shield through her throat until it snapped her spine.

Steve isn’t one of them. “Who?”

“HYDRA.”

The murmur beyond the doorway becomes a growl. “Do you have proof?”

Maria tosses Natasha the memory chip she brought along with her, but doesn’t take her gaze off Steve. “Skye has the originals. Tony has a copy. I thought it fair you should know.”

“You also thought it was fair to hunt us down like animals to be bagged and tagged,” Bucky notes with deadly calm.

“I think there should be a record of who you are and what you’re capable of.” She doesn’t look at Steve. “My stance has never wavered on that.”

The regret in Steve’s gaze aches, covered by steely calm. “You’ll excuse us if we check out your claims.”

She spreads her hands wide.“I can wait.”

* * *

Maria waits.

Bucky stands guard at the door as people come and go. Nobody’s going to cross the Winter Soldier, not when Steve’s given him an assignment.

“I could kill you for hurting him.”

Maria arches a cynical brow. “Compared with what he went through when he found out his buddy was the Winter Soldier? This is nothing.”

The wide shoulders quiver in rigid control before he takes a step back. A moment later, Steve walks in and nods briefly at Bucky. Maria doesn’t know what the look Bucky gives him means, but she’s pretty sure it’s the 1940s equivalent of _You sure know how to pick ‘em, buddy_.

“You vanished.” It’s not quite an accusation.

“I had orders.”

“Orders? Who’d give you—?” Understanding dawns.

Outside, in the network of tunnels that’s become one of the major anti-Registration hideaways, a tide of noise rises. Natasha appears at the door. “We’ve been made. Evac in progress. Looks like it’s Talbot again.”

Steve just nods. “Second contact, then. I’ll take Maria.”

“No need,” Maria doesn’t move. “Talbot’s still out for my blood after last time. He’ll be less intent if he’s got someone to gloat over.”

“Like hell.” He hauls her up. “You’re coming with me.”

How long has it been since they touched? Too long and not long enough. “I’m not one of yours, Steve.”

“No.” Standing in her space, holding her gaze and her wrist, Steve pulls up his left sleeve – and strips away a mesh disguising the scattered sketch of dots that aren’t scattered, sketchy, or dots anymore. “But it seems that I’m yours, Maria. So you might as well work with me rather than against me in this.”

* * *

Steve meets her gaze in the mirror as she comes to the bathroom door, then deliberately finishes wiping his face before asking. “Any pursuit?”

“Nothing on radar.” Maria hesitates, her eye on the bared forearm that bears her name. “When?”

He turns to face her. “A week after you vanished. Five days after Registration.”

“Inconvenient.”

“Maybe.” He watches her, and Maria forces herself to hold his gaze, to keep her expression clear. “I was talking with Bucky – making plans to get our people out and hidden. He asked where you were, and I didn’t know. He said it was just as well – that I was well rid of you.” Steve looks down at his arm and smiles – that faint, rueful curve of his mouth. “And there it was.”

She wants to ask _Why? Why me?_ But that’s a question that has no answer and never will.

“You think I should regret this?”

Lying is an option. Only, when she meets Steve’s gaze, she realises it’s not. “I think you will. Someday.”

“Do you want me to hide it?”

“If you don’t, they’ll never trust you again.” The leader of the anti-Registration rebels with the name of a woman on the pro-Registration side on his arm? They’d never see the threat behind the Registration Act – just claim that ‘love’ made him stupid. He can’t afford that. _She_ can’t afford that.

“I don’t care about them. Do _you_ want me to hide it?”

Maria says, “Yes,” because she so badly wants to say ‘ _No_.’

* * *

The meeting is in the middle of nowhere, red dust and tumbleweeds in the desert, two men on opposite sides of the line and the woman who’s working with both.

Tony pushes up his faceplate. “Going star-spangled, again, Maria?”

“We’ve been played for fools, Stark,” Steve reminds him. “By HYDRA.”

“Yes, I read Hill’s information packet – which, by the way, I want to know where you got and, oh, also exactly who set you on this trail.”

Maria smiles her most infuriating smirk. “Ever heard the one about not getting what we want, Tony?”

“True. I take it you’re here to discuss a solution.”

“We won’t stand for Registration,” Steve says. “That hasn’t changed.”

Stark tilts his head at Maria. “And does this ‘we’ include you?”

“No,” Maria says – for both of them, as well as herself. When Steve glances at her, frowning, she reminds him, “I’m for humanity and its safety and security. And while there are people out there like you, Steve, there are also monsters – ones who deserve the description, not just people like Banner or Skye or Petersen. We don’t make the law to exclude the good guys – we make it to encompass everyone and the good guys work around it.”

“Ah, the Hardass Hill we know and love – making us sound like errant schoolboys. So do we get a spanking for being very naughty?”

“As long as you doesn’t expect it to be followed by oral sex,” Steve counters.

She forestalls Tony’s next, inevitable riposte by adding, “Solutions, gentlemen. We’re not leaving here until we have them.”

“And you _want_ to sleep with her?”

“Says the man who sleeps with Pepper Potts.”

“But who wouldn’t?”

The gaze Steve turns to Maria sears her through to her toes. “Me.”

* * *

Not everyone’s happy with the compromise – voluntary registration, if not the surveillance and enforced employment that the Act originally cited. Some will. Most people of the superhuman kind will ignore it, although Maria insisted the members of the Avengers put their names down in a show of good faith.

“If you’re going to avenge the goddamn world as a superhero team, then you’ve given up the right to pretend you’re smalltown,” she tells Steve.

A slashing glance at Tony keeps him from saying anything about Cap being whipped when Steve acquiesces, although he’s not the only one grumbling.

Certainly the HYDRA-sympathetic elements in the Senate and the NSA are less than pleased to discover that their attempted coup of the intelligence community has failed. And Maria has a whole new set of enemies – and frenemies – who are now gunning for her.

Half the US Senate for starters.

And that’s even before Tony delivers the _coup de grâce_.

He hustles her over to the table where the Avengers are being the first to publically put themselves in the database. “You’re putting your name down, too.”

Maria arches a brow. “I’m not a superhero, Stark.”

“Really? Because here’s Captain America and the leaders of the anti-Registration rebels choosing to be bagged and tagged along side pro-Registration types like me and Deathlok – and it’s surely not because I’m just so damn charming.”

“And just what exactly are you going to put down as my superpower?”

“Hm. ‘ _I can kill you with my brain,_ ’ should just about cover it. Accurate, too.” But as she signs the Register, Tony leans down and murmurs, “You wouldn’t consider adding ‘ _Captain America’s soulmate_ ’ to that, I suppose?”

Maria glares at him.

* * *

Maria’s not surprised to find him waiting outside her quarters in Avengers Tower. But when she opens the door and waits for him to follow her, he just stands there. “Maria. Do you _want_ me to come in?”

“Do I—?”

Steve lifts his left arm in something that’s as close to resignation as she’s ever seen in him. “This isn’t absolute, Maria. Or it doesn’t have to be.”

“And you’ll wear the mesh for the rest of your life?”

“No,” he says steadily. “I’ll carry your name with the shield until I can’t carry the shield anymore.”

Maria stares, her throat suddenly too full for speech. Her body feels frozen, or stretched out – too tight to move or she’ll snap – and everything stings, including the scar that she barely remembers not having and the heart she always swore she’d never had.

Then Steve drops his gaze, accepting her silence: cards played, game lost.

She doesn’t have words – not yet. But when she steps into his space and puts her arms around him, no words are needed to translate the catch of his breath or the way his arms cradle her or the way he leans his cheek against hers.

How long is it before either of them move to let go, even a little? Maria doesn’t know. Long enough for the warmth of him – the reality of him – to seep into her, flesh and blood, soul and spirit. _Hers_. Just as she’s his, soulmarks be damned.

A fragment of a song or poem comes to her:  _My beloved is mine and I am his…_

When they pull apart, Steve still holds her shoulders. “Maria, this isn’t just about soulmarks.”

“I know.” Maria kisses him, a brief and tender reassurance. “It never was.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The line from Maria's father is inspired from captainhillshipper's fic "Soul Mate".
> 
> And - according to the Works count on my Dashboard - this gets me to 600 fics on AO3! Woohoo!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] No Fate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995223) by [Podcath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podcath/pseuds/Podcath)
  * [No Fate [cover]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826697) by [I Used To Be an Artist (scribblemyname)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/I%20Used%20To%20Be%20an%20Artist)




End file.
